Shades of Grey
by Like Stars in the Sky
Summary: Ignorance is bliss. Too bad fate wouldn't let her forget. Self Insert


Yes, this is an SI. I have joined the ranks. I'm trying to set it up to skip over some of the more boring, overused plotlines, so just enjoy the story and let me know how I've handled that.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Naruto_. This is the only time I will say that. You people already know this, and I find no need to repeat myself every chapter that comes. It's redundant.

**Prologue**

I'd always been a sort of go-with-the-flow kind of girl, at heart, and just like other girls, I wanted things I didn't have enough drive to go for. I was a smart girl with big ambitions and too much laziness to do me any real good. I watched anime instead of keeping up with physical fitness, ate unhealthy American food instead of trying to stay healthy. I read fanfictions instead of writing the novels I'd always wanted to publish.

I had almost no self-confidence, and I lacked the necessary components to make myself better, to motivate me without an outside influence to guide me along. In a place where what I wanted didn't go along with what everyone else wanted, where the needs of many meant more than the desires of one, I didn't have what it takes to go against the grain. I floated along, following the path laid out by life and circumstance, and I hated every bit of it.

I'd always wanted to be a different kind of girl, to be strong and fast and smart and have a ton of books published, the kind that end up really famous, like Steven King and Harry Potter (among many others). I had the talent at writing, surely, to come up with something original and different and entirely unforgettable. What I didn't have was motivation. That was what I wanted.

The drive to become exactly the kind of person I always knew I could be.

It took dying for me to stand up and be that person.

* * *

In all my life, I'd never been the self-sacrificing type of person. It's not that I couldn't be that way, just that I'd never been in a situation that would require it (unless you count parental discipline with more than one person being punished; I usually offered to go first, whether I wanted to or not). I could be that person; I'd always known that, but truthfully, I'd never expected it as an outcome of my future. I grew up poor, but safe. I'd never expected, in all my twenty-two years, to die for someone else.

In my heart of hearts, I'd always imagined my death to be as boring as my life had been. I'd thought death would come as some nearly impossible, really stupid, _'I can't believe this is what killed me'_, type of thing. I was wrong.

"_How much longer 'till we get there?" I asked, fanning myself with my hand as I leaned closer to the wide-open window to my right._

_The summer heat was strong, and I'd been sweating like a pig for hours. My overlarge sleeping pillow lay discarded in the floorboard at my feet. My friend Monica, our designated Florida-bound driver for the day (I drove yesterday), rolled her eyes._

"_We've already crossed the state line," she responded. "Only a couple more hours and dear Lily can enjoy her nice air-conditioned hotel room while I go down to the beach."_

_I groaned, and she snickered good-naturedly. "I hate the sun," I whined. "Why does it have to be so damn hot?"_

_She gave me a pointed look, steering us onto a bridge. "You're the one who suggested the beach," she told me, smirking. "You're not going to back out now and spend the whole time hiding. We've already put too much money into this trip for you to waste it."_

"_I know that!" I exasperated, glancing over at her. "I like the beach; I do. It's just the heat that I hate."_

"_You'll have to get used to it, eventually."_

_I rolled my eyes. "Yes, Mother," I told her, focusing on the wide expanse of water passing by beneath us._

"_Hey, don't-"_

_The next few seconds were filled with the sound of screeching tires and clashing, groaning metal as the crash took hold. I didn't know, couldn't think of exactly what caused it, because the next thing I knew, our old Chevy was flying through the air, dropping at an insane speed over the side of the bridge. I don't know if I'll ever figure out what caused me to react the way I did in the few seconds before we hit the water._

_One second, I was wide-eyed, on the verge of panicking, and the next, I was eerily calm, ignoring my adrenaline-pumped heart as I shoved my favorite pillow in front of my best friend's face. _

"_Hold your breath!" I screamed, pulling her seatbelt loose an instant before we hit the water._

_With the windows down, the car sank fast, filling up with water faster than I could manage to get a decent breath of my own. The water flew straight into my face, gagging me, and I had a vague hope that the pillow had prevented the fall from hurting my friend. My heart was racing, and I could feel the irrational panic trying to pull me in. Less than a minute later, we were fully submerged, and somehow, I managed to tamper down my feelings long enough to look over at Monica beside me. She was still clutching the pillow, tightly, desperately and I was glad to see that she seemed alright. I could barely think long enough to rip the pillow away from her and shove her towards the window._

_She was terrified, I could tell, more than even me I'd wager, and as always, she could only follow my unspoken orders. Honestly, I didn't know why I wasn't panicking, too. I was just as frightened. What was it that made it possible for me to push past it when she couldn't? What made me different? _

_She pulled herself out the window in the next instant, drifting towards the surface as I'd ordered and my own panic returned full-force. I pulled on my seatbelt frantically, despairing that I hadn't also been able to free myself just minutes earlier. It didn't budge. Monica was, thankfully, too far away to notice. _

_The car was still sinking, and a moment later, my struggles began to lessen. I couldn't think. Spots danced in my vision. My lungs ached, burning intensely with the lack of air. _

_An instant later, all feeling melted away, and I was left with darkness._

**End Prologue**

After this, I'm skipping ahead until Graduation year, most likely. I haven't yet mentioned who she is exactly or where in the series she is, and you'll have to wait to find out, but I will say that she's older than the Rookie 9. I am not going to put her on Team 7, and she will not graduate with them. They won't even be in the same class, though I can assure that she will know a few of them. The reason it's all happening this way is because I don't want to waste half the story on her early academy years. So many other stories do that, and it's gotten kind of boring. If people want to read about that, then I can make a smaller, separate story out of it later on. Unless something severely important happens during that time for the OC, then it's not necessary to catalogue every instant from birth onwards. Not even the anime/ manga does that; they just use flashbacks for necessary info. Besides all that, I tend to explain more than I show, and I'm trying to avoid doing that too much here.


End file.
